Information & Ethics committee  Within the acts, I do think it should be covered. I know the Privacy Commissioner said he'd take a pass on that. However, in India, on the access to information side, political parties are covered. Political parties handle fundraising, pretty large databases of information. Wit

Information & Ethics committee  I think he's performed a very valuable service. When you're talking about how we should expand the education mandate of the Privacy Commissioner, I think everybody, whether they're in the workplace or citizens, has to be vigilant or call to account things that they know about, an

Information & Ethics committee  I think it's important, but I think expanding his investigative powers—that's his main job—is even more important, because right now he doesn't have all the tools in place to go to court or to make recommendations on metadata, biometric data, and all the rest. If you don't mind,

Information & Ethics committee  The way government legislation is written, there are always exemptions to getting this or that. Why aren't there any exemptions to what's necessary? I think maybe a list of things that government has no business collecting may be one way of helping facilitate a narrower definitio

Information & Ethics committee  In polls and all the rest, a lot of people rank privacy as their number one concern, and I don't think they're reassured. A lot of people will say privacy is dead, but on the other hand, people need reassurance, and included in that is legislative reassurance. I think the act has

Information & Ethics committee  You can penalize people as a method of enforcement. I think the problem I have is that in the current act, if you look at the sections on use, retention, and collection, it is so vague. That's why I'm saying you have to build that act up. You can't be explicit in everything, bu

Information & Ethics committee  I have just one informational thing. Canada has really had the Privacy Act since the late 1970s because I operated under part IV of the Canadian Human Rights Act, so it's an interesting act. The Privacy Commissioner tries to do this to some extent, but my only comment is that I

Information & Ethics committee  The crops are coming in, and the Liberals are not coming in.

Information & Ethics committee  Fairly simply, there are certain things that the state has no business knowing about, or if they are to know about it they need certain restrictions or rules. That's a lot different from public policy issues, where the public has the need for that information. There has to be acc

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  It's difficult. I was not advocating for every detail of the case. Personal matters can be sensitive, but when you're a trustee on a public board, the public or the public trustees or everybody else should know something about it. This reporter going out to B.C. was kept totally

Information & Ethics committee  Oh, there is.

Information & Ethics committee  Well, you just gave an example and I'm trying to say how I would handle that example. Different people have different perceptions of what is private and what shouldn't be private. But a lot of people have misconceptions about what should be public, and they think surveillance of

Information & Ethics committee  Surveillance is always scary. I'm back here to testify given my involvement for over four decades in privacy matters and advocacy. My privacy advocacy work began with a local civil liberties group dealing with the growing use of social insurance numbers as an identifier. As an